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Comment by steveblgh | Hacker News Reader

Come on, building a working OS is a gigantic effort. Last time I checked Xobni was regex-ing phone numbers and names from e-mail texts, plus some fancy GUI of the kind that you said in one essay that you hate (messing around with obscure Windows APIs). Following your reasoning, the Xobni guys could have more easily built a full OS, which, with all respect, I seriously doubt.

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Following your reasoning

You're not; you're supplying new reasoning for me. My point was that big companies can screw up even apparently straightforward projects, so screwing up novel ones would be even more likely.

PG, I would have downmodded him for you but some mean people took all my points :(

Well, you implied one was more difficult than the other. Then the other one has to be easier, otherwise it doesn't make much sense.

My next YC idea: A plugin for Vista that makes it work.

You know, that might be just on the right side of crazy. Could one build some kind of layer on top of Vista that would make it tolerable to users?

Depends on why users think it's intolerable, I suppose. The most common complaints I hear about Vista, even from casual users, are about performance, and I'm not sure what you could do about that.

It would not surprise me if there's a whole bunch of useless services running; disabling them might help.

http://www.blackviper.com/WinVista/servicecfg.htm

Disable UAC.

There have been noises from Microsoft going right up to Gates to the effect that they themselves are abandoning Vista. This would make the life of this product pretty short if it only targets Vista's flaws.

Also, only people forced to use Vista are using it at this point which boils down to employees of corporations with not-so-wise IT departments - not the prime audience for a startup product IMO.

I do think there is potential for money in the idea of building a layer on top of Windows that makes it more usable. Xobni seems to be doing exactly that starting with email. (I'm sure they are looking beyond email by this point).

got a link or cite for the "microsoft abandoning vista" thing?

if that happens, my evil glee my well burst out of my gut like a baby alien.

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